ds, but was determined still more by the
fear of three menaces, fire, sedition, and the plague. Wooden buildings
were already discouraged by statute, and the danger of fire from the
wooden theaters is shown by the burning of the Globe and the Fortune.
The gathering of crowds was feared by every property holder, and the
theaters were frequently the scenes of outbreaks of the apprentices. The
danger of the plague from the crowd at plays was the greatest of all.
London was hardly ever free from it, and suffered terrible devastation
in the years 1593 and 1603. For these reasons the theaters were
forbidden within the city's jurisdiction, and were driven into the
outskirts. The best companies appeared frequently at court, and on the
accession of James I they were licensed directly as servants of various
members of the royal family. The actors were thereafter under the
immediate control of the court, and certain "private" theaters were
established within the city. But this triumph of the court over the long
opposition of the city was not an unmixed blessing for the drama.

The theaters in 1590 represented the public on which they depended for
support; by 1616 they were far less representative of the nation or
London, and more dependent on the court and its following. The
Blackfriars theater, before which gathered the crowd of coaches that
annoyed the puritans of the neighborhood, was a symptom of the growth of
wealth and luxury, and of the increased power of the monarchy; the
protests of the puritan neighborhood were an indication of the growth of
a large class hostile alike to an arbitrary court, luxury, and the
theater.

Shakespeare's lifetime, however, saw little of this sharp division into
parties or of that narrow moral consistency which Puritanism came to
require. Looking back on his age in contrast with our own, we are
perhaps most impressed by its striking incongruities. This London of
dirt and disease was also the arena for extravagant fashion and princely
display. This populace that watched with joy the cruel torment of a bear
or the execution of a Catholic also delighted in the romantic comedies
of Shakespeare. This people, so appallingly credulous and ignorant, so
brutal, childish, so mercurial compared with Englishmen of to-day, yet
set the standard of national greatness. This absurdly decorated gallant
could stab a rival in the back or write a penitential lyric. Each man
presents strange, almost inexplicable, co